Missing Blogger Esther Dingley

[SummerSky]

What food issues did she have?

Laura the hiker she travelled with briefly told the police Esther only had a lettuce leaf & some seeds to eat one day. For dinner I think.

Laura shared her dinner with Esther.

Esther had a habit of asking strangers for fruit during her hikes too which they reported very odd.

 

[AriaAria]

They can’t as he’s seen as a victims family, so they can’t criticise him.

They are finally broaching this theory over on WS, albeit tentatively. IMHO it's the most logical explanation for what happened, plus the way he has tried to steer the narrative is very suspicious. He is desperate for us all to know how happy they were and keeps saying she can't have had an accident and someone else did it - why can't she have had an accident? It's what happens to everyone else who disappears up there, so why does he want us to think otherwise? And why isn't he out desperately looking for her right now? I would be. Same as the McCann's who never searched for Madeleine, also hired a PR firm and steered the narrative. Plus he had that weird BBC interview where he said "I loved her" and then corrected it to "I love her". I always found the interview they did about the person missing in the mountains strange (the one where they talked about the helicopter landing) - the coincidence of it - and I often wondered if that gave him the idea to do something, knowing he had the mountains to cover for him. I dunno, I could be completely wrong, and I hope I am. All JMO of course.

Edited to say, I know he conducted "his own search" but this is suspicious to me too as he wouldn't join the police one. And who knows if he was really searching, or if he was making sure his tracks were fully covered?

 

[Pippa M]

The worst nightmare for the mother.
Whoever is guilty of the death of Esther will be found out soon,now they have the rest of her body to work on.Forensics are amazing these days...so look out whoever the baddy is.

 

[flopsymopsy]

I don't get how they can say anything is 100% in this case. Even if it wasn't the partner, she could have come across any dangerous individual who caused her harm or pushed her off the edge, and we may never know

 

[glynisb]

Dan seems to think everything is ok and he’s out of the woods. I don’t think he is yet. It’s all very strange and I don’t usually pick up on things like this. The three days with no contact baffles me. If you lived someone that much you would contact them.

 

[Shadwells]

Now a bone has been confirmed as Esther, we know now, tragically, she's dead. But beyond that nothing's changed. Dan still doesn't have any kind of alibi (the cops don't have his phone or computer); he could easily have cycled, hitched, caught a bus (which goes through the village) or had access to a vehicle. He has no coherent explanation for why he waited 3 DAYS to report her missing! He denies Esther had left him, when Esther made this clear to a walker who's now given 3 police forces a statement. He's never produced any evidence for why he was so confident she would return on 25th when he also says she'd repeatedly delayed returning. He's always denied she left in a hurry when they'd just finished a very long trip and she'd had no plan to leave that day; and she slept in a lay-by an hour from him, then drove another hour the next day and stayed at a caravan site on her own for a whole week. He's said she was super-competent in the hills and could not have got lost while the local Search and Rescue folk have made it clear that her movements on the hill made no sense and that's why they don't know where to look for a body. If she had an accident, it was obviously because she got lost and out of her depth; the background is her wandering aimlessly, beyond her abilities, to stay away from the boyfriend she'd just left (and was hounding her to come back?). The few texts Dan has released are highly selective. If she had an accident then on scree she likely survived the fall and lay dying while Dan waited 3 days to raise the alarm. OR, she didn't have an accident and a single bone has just appeared on a well-used track as if by magic.

 

[Trixabellee9393]

Hey been following this thread the whole time and am saddened that it is now confirmed that Esther is dead she seemed such a lovely person. I really hope the police are continuing to try an piece this all together as if she was there the whole time they would have found her by now almost certainly she was found so close to her last known location I find that very confusing. That would be way too much of a coincidence for a bird or animal to drop the bones close to where her route was, as if that was the case she would have been found immediately on searching the route. She can’t have been so out of sight that Dan walked for miles searching and the police but then suddenly a random runner can easily spot a skull it’s heart breaking I really wonder what actually happened to her I hope no one returned her to the mountain to make it look like an accident I really hope no one was involved an it was just a accident. Crazy doesn’t make sense!!

 

[Trixabellee9393]

Just seen a news story that says she may not be found for five years as they suspect she slipped on a part of the mountain which was icy ... may sound dumb here but why can’t they go and search that area then? Rather than leave her surely a big search team and all the equipment would be safe?

 

[Agent Krycek]

I don’t know if the boyfriend had anything to do with it, but his behaviour has just been so strange throughout. From the bbc interview soon after she went missing where he accidentally says he ‘loved’ her rather than ‘loves’ her and then kind of smirked, to the strange dossier he released which contained the one sided text message conversation where only the lovey-dovey texts from Esther were released. He seems to have been tightly trying to control the narrative throughout in a quite calculated way - despite comments from the police and from a fellow hiker who both intimated all was not well between Esther and Dan. Why had he been so adamant throughout that Esther must have been kidnapped rather than had an accident? Was he worried if it was an accident that their ‘brand’ would have been tarnished? So much doesn’t make sense about his behaviour, but I’m not sure if this means he had anything to do with her tragic fate. Or maybe he is just completely misunderstood and doesn’t deserve all this speculation.

 

[judgejohndeed]

Anyone else still think he's done it? I just don't find him convincing at all.

 

[Tots]

I read the “I think I can see you” message as meaning the general area he was in, from a long distance?

 

[JoanieDee]

After reading through this thread I did a bit of research and found they had a YouTube channel. This video is quite chilling considering what has happened. I hope she’s ok.

 

[sassmaster3000]

@Johara dont take this as me not being interested! I am just skeptical about how useful the information will be, knowing that you are paying privately for it.
Just trying to look out for you!

 

[NightCircus]

Figure seen asleep in Esther Dingley's van 10 days after she vanished

'Lucia' said she popped out with her dog Tipo and saw missing British hiker Esther Dingley's Fiat campervan with its light and then saw the figure sleeping in the back in Benasque, Spain, at 10pm on December 2.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Someone was spotted in her campervan days after she disappeared, apparently sleeping, but Spanish police say "yea that was one of our forensic officers". Having a nap?

OK then

It gets weirder and weider.

Also, the DM keep repeating the fact about her boyfriend staying at £1000 a week farmhouse. What are they hinting at there?

 

[petitspois]

Same for me. It’s not a case of ‘not liking the sound of him’ or anything like that. I find it utterly bizarre given everything we know about him and how he’s behaving that anyone can be totally convinced he’s had nothing to do with it. I wish it weren’t so, but I have no doubt unfortunately.

I agree. My worry is it's such a complex case, involving a foreign citizen and seems to straddle two countries that neither of the police forces will investigate as thoroughly as they need to. In my opinion, that's why he chose that spot too.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

So the fundraiser was launched exactly one hot minute after her death was deemed most likely to be an accident, which was determined as a result of her body being found. Almost like there was an incentive for her body to be found. By the same person who established the fundraiser. Uncanny.

 

[judgejohndeed]

I’m wondering if they’re saying they think it’s an accident to see if he trips up more when he thinks he’s not being watched anymore.

 

[SvenS]

SvenS, I have very much appreciated your comments on here. Because I straddle between the two theories, and a lot of what you have written re the accident theory makes sense to me. Plus you helped me get clearer in my mind that she probably went West and never did go East. Maybe she always went West and could possibly have had the accident that night.

Thanks. I've learnt a lot from this thread, and you made me wonder if she did make that snap decision to go 'off-piste' from the top of P du Salv.

There are a lot of unknowns. It's possible that she made it to the refuge and there was an unknown stranger there. Maybe the partner managed a midnight dash. But they just seem like outliers to me, particularly the possibility of a 100 mile nightime journey when France was locked down. The chances of being pulled over by the police would be so high. She was so far from her intended route and there are plenty of closer places that would have been suitable for framing an accident; would a potential attacker really go so much further than necessary? Towards a pass where there might have been other hikers and give her a chance to shout/call for help? As for the tent, it's ultralight, the material is very thin and it's more like a tarp with a fly screen. I think it would have ripped and fallen to shreds if you tried to carry a body in it.

 

[SummerSky]

She needed to ask another hiker for fruit, she was ascending late in the day, and she didn't know if the refuge had a winter room. Despite her fitness, she was not well prepared for the conditions at that time of year.

That is true.

But logically if you're carrying crampons you'd wear them up a tricky cliff. Plus it lightens the load.

But beyond that I trust Federico, Rickshaw, Mel & Otto's opinions as mountaineering experts - they see no reason she'd go up Pic de Glere at all. Most or all said they wouldn't.

I watch them struggling to fit the staged crime scene to logic and hit a dead wall.

An expert's opinion from WS after viewing photos:

"Pic de la Glere really is a hideous pile of rock though and surely only a masochist would bother with it."

 

[Johara]

The man who gave her a lift hasn’t been found yet has he.

Yes. Antonio Ballarin aged 70. He was hiking with his grandson when he met her. The Daily Mail mentioned him saying she was planning to take a train to Toulouse (odd as she had the campervan with her).
Toulouse is near where her bf DC had been living in a farmhouse (village called Gersy).

What's really odd is the Daily Mail seem to have edited it out after publishing (police request perhaps?) But it is still in the Pressreader share of the same article 9 December.

Wrt Toulouse... so Ballarin says she planned to take a train back to France:
- and leave the camper van behind?
- arrive home early & surprise DC?
- what if DC was cheating? Had he given her reason to be insecure?
- her Facebook posts recently spoke about needing to clear confusion & needing to get away

As to motive nobody has raised the usual cucumber: life insurance.

These are 2 ultra ambitious people whose VC funded venture failed then he got a dangerous illness and they quit it all. They did not quit a highly successful life 6 yrs ago. They were deep in debt due to the business.

They are A plus types who walked away.

They cancelled their wedding years ago which seems unnecessary. A postponement would be fine but this is years later.

In posts and videos ED always spoke about her love for him. He did not do the same. On his instagram he wrote a few lines (citing from memory) "I crave you when you are gone but when you are with me I need my space. I need to find another way".

As common law spouses they may have had a big life insurance policy in case of each other's deaths.